Shoe-Makers and RaincoatsA Lies & Detection EpisodeJonas interviews Soviet Master Spy Leopold Trepper Jonas builds this episode from The Great Game the 1977 personal memoirs of Soviet Master Spy, Leopold Trepper. In the interview, he explores how Trepper created a believable covert identity in spite of language issues and close scrutiny by the police. The interview also details how Trepper was able to generate the Red Orchestra spy network from nothing, building it even in the face of active opposition from his Soviet spy bosses.Finally, the episode tells how turncoats (trusted friends and devoted colleagues) destroyed the Red Orchestra organization from within.By 1941, Soviet spies had penetrated the German military intelligence service (Abwehr), the German Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Propaganda, the Foreign Office, and the administration of important German cities, including Cologne and Berlin. In other countries which the Nazis then controlled, Soviet spies had penetrated both the national and the city police, the local transportation authorities, the local telephone systems, and he local banking systems.There was a long-standing joke in Moscow that Joe Stalin knew what was happening in Hitler’s upper circles before the Wehrmacht High Command did.This was a joke with considerable truth.The so-called Red Orchestra had incredible success in acquiring sensitive information and sending it quickly to Moscow. Some have believed that the Soviet Military Intelligence Service brilliantly planned such a successful operation. Actually, it happened in spite of them.A single agent was sent to Belgium in 1938 and told to “get something going.” Unfortunately, the agent’s superiors in Moscow were victims of Stalin’s purges. So, the agent was left alone without support (or interference) from the Moscow Center.Leopold Trepper was the so-called “Big Chief” of the extremely successful ‘Red Orchestra” network of Soviet spies which operated in Nazi occupied countries during World War II. At its height, Trepper’s “Red Orchestra” group of spy networks operated in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and the Netherlands. Hitler regarded the “Red Orchestra” as his principal clandestine threat and assigned an elite group of senior counter-espionage agents (the Special Detachment for Red Orchestra) to track down and eradicate it.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related